Don’t think you can get off that easily, buster!
Are you insinuating that he is wrong in asking that question? 
Yes, on Callan Bridge, Tullycrine (as it is known to those who play it often 
) is played as a slow reel would be played.
Danu plays the hornpipe Peacock’s Feather as a fast reel.
However, I tend to think that this does not diminish the fact or sur-fact that although a hornpipe is played as another tune rhythm that it makes it no less a hornpipe. Perhaps an interpretive hornpipe?
Sometimes, especially when learning by ear or from others, we learn a tune that we later find is actually a hornpipe, but that you learned it as a reel or vice versa. I don’t think a clear line of definition exists.
It just may be another example of making the music their/our own.
Redfox, you’re HOT HOT HOT!
(Wanderer, plase don’t tell my wife about this post)
Have a great Christmas all.
2/4 Hornpipes are all Hornpipes on GHBs. Look up Hornpipe on any Highland Bagpipe tune search and they will all be 2/4 with 16th notes, super annoying if you start on Whistle.
we don’t have an MP3 up of this (although we do include it on our CD) but we do “Fisher’s” hornpipe in a “bluegrass” style. We got it from a crossover band, so honestly, it’s NOT played as a hornpipe, or really bluegrass, either.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…
As long as there is no international regulatory body tightly governing the composition of the world’s traditional music, people are just going to continue to break the rules. They’re going to keep writing non-swingy, reel-sounding hornpipes and doing whatever the heck else they want, as if there weren’t an exactly right and wrong way to do it. What is the world coming to??!?
Dare i say it, “Hornpipey sounding reels!”
Is this really true? Is a hornpipe not a hornpipe because it’s played in that jumpy way? I mean, if t.h.o.tullycrine was always played as on Callan Brigde, wouldn’t it simply be a Reel, and not a Hornpipe?
Amar, if I take a jig and play it as a waltz, the tune I play is a waltz but the original version is still a jig. It’s all about how you play it.
but (I think..) that’s not quite the same, a waltz is in 3/4ths time, a jig in 6/8ths, whereas both hornpipes and reels are 4/4ths. Ok, they are similar, but nonetheless, at least the beat-time, or whatever it’s called, is written differently. Am I missing somthing?
edit:
On second thought, I see what you mean. it’s the way you play it that makes it a waltz/jig reel/hornpipe.
so, as written before, had the humours of t.cr. always been played as a reel, then I guess it would be a reel too, correct?
No, there are a few tunes that blur the distinction a bit but as a rule hornpipes and reels are different forms with different structures. A hornpipe played fast doesn’t become a reel because it still has a hornpipe structure with all the rhythmic implications that go with each particular type of tune.
Peter, can you be a bit more specific about these “rhythmic implications”? Because I (think I) know they’re there, but I’m not sure at all I can recognize them.
I don’t know how it is in Ireland, but all the teaching I’ve ever run into in America does an absolutely lousy job of making clear the distinctions between the different types of tune. All I’ve ever heard stated as a definition of the hornpipe form is that it’s in 4/4 time, it’s swung, and (it is sometimes added) it’s got that quarter-quarter-quarter thing to end each section. My sense is this is a bad way to define them – certainly conditions #2 and #3 can both be missing – but I don’t think most of us have a better way.
Breandan Breathnach says about the hornpipe:
The hornpipe has a structure similar to that of the reel, but is played in a more deliberate manner, with a well defined accent on the first and third beats of each bar. Three accented crothets is a feature of the closing bar of each part ..
which I suppose is a better description than I could have thought up.
If you have ever played for a set, with a few dancers using battering steps you’d immediately know the difference between reel and hornpipe rhythm.
But again, there are different types of hornpipes (English, Scottish, American) that may vary a bit structurally and there ar some reels (like Bothy Band’s Blackbird) with un-typical structures that may blur distinctions a bit.